Designer Brendan Thorne is working on Destiny 2, previously he was at Defiance and WildStar. On Twitter, he explains why bosses in raids often do not have unique character models, but are just larger versions of normal mobs.
Who is speaking? Brendan Thorne, who, according to his LinkedIn profile, has been in gaming since 2005:
- He started as a Game Master for WoW
- was then a quest designer for the MMORPG WildStar (recently discontinued) for 4 years
- worked starting in 2011 at Defiance as a content designer
- Thorne has been at Bungie since 2013 and works there as a Senior Game Designer on Destiny and Destiny 2. He helped build the “Broken Throne” .
What’s it about: On Twitter, Thorne has answered the question as to why bosses are often just XXL versions of normal mobs in a series of tweets. He is often asked this.
No wonder, as Destiny is teeming with giant Servitors, giant Fallen, giant Cabals, and other XXL versions of well-known enemies.
Thorne tells a story from a fictional meeting. The meeting is not necessarily aimed at Destiny, but is the result of his 12 years in gaming across various studios.
Let’s build a flying giant cyborg
This is how the fictional boss meeting goes: Imagine you are a designer and in an early meeting about what the next boss will be like. The boss says: “We have 6 months until launch. That means we have much less time.”
You cheerfully suggest that the boss will be a completely new giant squirrel-cyborg-eagle that flies around and breathes fire on the raid.
Immediately, all the animators, technicians, artists, and sound effect folks in the room look at each other and make a face.
“What’s wrong?” you ask.
If you are not an artist, you won’t understand why they made that face.
The character artist responsible for creating the boss will explain to you that your idea requires a new rig, meaning the skeleton that the boss moves with. Just the rig will take two months.
Then the tech designer will say, “We don’t have flying technology in the engine. It will take months of engineering time. And we don’t know what area we want to design for flying. Will he fly freely or will he fly in curves?”
Then the boss intervenes: “Okay, so no flying boss.”
That’s why bosses are just modified standard enemies in raids
What is really possible? Thorne then continues that ultimately the meeting agrees to take the elephant enemy that they already have, inflate it to triple its size, and then add spikes to make it look cool.
Additionally, they could add some bones to the rig, maybe create a handful of new attack animations and adjust the movement patterns.
The planned jumping attack will be scrapped because the boss might get stuck somewhere.
In short: Creating completely new character models is incredibly labor-intensive because they require a variety of features and the time and resources of designers are always tight, as their work is needed in various places.
You can do a lot more things when you use existing assets and adapt them, says Thorne.
You can read the complete, worthwhile series of tweets here in the original.
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In this article, the raid leader of Destiny 2 shows his cards:
